Chrome/Firefox: Part useful tool and part social experiment, Ben Grosser's Facebook Demetricator removes all of the numbers that keep our eyes glued to Facebook—likes, new messages, comments, notifications, all of them are gone. With them removed, you can scan the site for the information you want, read without worrying about killing too much time interacting, and get back to work.

Facebook is distracting enough, but the little hooks that are designed to keep us there all do their part to pull in our attention. The Facebook Demetricator erases those numbers as though they were never even there. Ben describes the extension this way:

Facebook Demetricator is a web browser addon that hides these metrics. No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on who they are and what they said. Friend counts disappear. '16 people like this' becomes ‘people like this'. Through changes like these, Demetricator invites Facebook's users to try the system without the numbers, to see how their experience is changed by their absence. With this work I aim to disrupt the prescribed sociality these metrics produce, enabling a network society that isn't dependent on quantification.

Of course, if you already have AdBlock Plus installed, the AntiSocial plugin can do much of this for you too, and we've shown you how to use SocialFixer to improve your Facebook experience as well. Either way, if the idea piques your interest, or you think it'll make you more productive on or off Facebook, it's available for Chrome and Firefox at the link below.